Comments Off on Bring the Outdoors In: Make Your Apartment a Garden Sanctuary

By Katherine Medlin One of the biggest drawbacks of apartment living can be the lack of an outdoor space, especially for nature lovers. Don’t have a nice balcony or patio? That doesn’t mean you can’t let nature in, making your apartment a more…

Congratulations, you’re having a baby! Get ready to be overwhelmed with the hundreds and hundreds of baby products that you may never use. It can be very difficult, especially for a first time parent, to decide which items are necessary. As a mom…

Comments Off on What’s Holding Small Businesses Back from Sustainability Initiatives?

Running a small- or medium-sized business is not easy, especially for those who trying to do so in an eco-friendly way. For start-ups, creating a culture of eco-friendliness — where recycling, buying sustainable supplies, and using low-energy…

Genesis. Image credit: Flickr , IndyCharlie In 2005, a nascent green ‘counter-culture’ went all in for lifestyle changes and exploring green product and building design. Posting was cool. There were extended online debates over questions such as Should I drive a hybrid. How do I know if there’s vinyl in my sex toy? * There were detours en-post for bio-diesel and especially for corn-based ethanol – shhhh, keep it buried in the archives – lists of green gifts for the holidays, and so on. China, however, soon upset the green blog cart by visibly beating the U… Read the full story on TreeHugger

Bus Rapid Transit + Bike-Sharing + Subway High-density is greener than low-density, but for cities to reach their green potential, they need to offer good transportation alternatives to individual vehicles, especially for commuting. Guanghzou’s transportation system is a good example of this. In fact, it’s so good that it won the city this year’s International Sustainable Transportation award .

So, it turns out that Barack Obama is running for president in 2012. Who’d have thought? His camp made the announcement today, and released this video about how supporters from his 2008 campaign still really like him and why you should too.

Photos: Cornell University Vibro-Research Group (From left: Jamie Pelletier, Albert Dodson, Rona Banai, Zach Gould, Marco Zhang, mechanical engineering professor Frank Moon and Jared Valentin.) As a renewable energy resource, wind has lots going for it – but one major downside is the cost to set up the wind turbines themselves, not to mention the problematic visual impact and the noise pollution it generates (often likened to a small jet engine, especially for those living close by). However, undergraduate students from Cornell University’s Vibro-Wind Research Group are working on a space-saving prototype that will harness win… Read the full story on TreeHugger

Purple pokeberry power (Photo: Muffet on Flickr) Never underestimate the power of weeds. Case in point: the common pokeberry weed – whose red dye was once used by American Civil War soldiers to write letters home – may now hold the secret for revolutionizing the next generation of low-cost photovoltaic cells, making widespread, affordable homegrown solar power a real possibility, especially for developing nations.

Image credit: Grist Glenn Beck’s outspoken distaste for environmentalism and especially for environmentalists is well known. In spite of this, however, a recent string of comments has made people wonder whether beck might be a “closet treehugger.”…